Former New Star manager Alan Miller to make comeback with new firm

Former New Star fund manager Alan Miller has teamed up with Alexander
Spencer-Churchill, the socialite and scion of the Churchill family, to
launch a wealth management firm.

Alan Miller made more than £30m as manager of New Star's flagship hedge fundPhoto: Geoff Pugh

By Richard Fletcher

10:25PM GMT 21 Mar 2009

Once one of the City's most successful and best known money managers, Mr Miller left the industry two years ago, having made more than £30m as manager of New Star's flagship hedge fund.

The new wealth management group – which has been named Spencer Churchill Miller – will be officially launched next month.

Mr Miller has taken office space in Knightsbridge – just a stone's throw from the offices of his former employer.

Mr Miller's decision to retire followed a bitter public divorce from his wife of two years. Outraged by a court's decision to award his wife a £5m settlement, Mr Miller pursued an appeal all the way to the House of Lords.

During the appeal process, Mr Miller's lawyer famously claimed it would have been cheaper if his client had run her over in a car. The fund manager has since remarried and started a family.

Mr Miller was one of the original fund managers at New Star. He joined in 2002 as chief investment officer from Jupiter, where he had worked with New Star's straight-talking founder John Duffield.

Although one of the City's most respected hedge fund managers, his flagship hedge fund was hit after he took substantial stakes in a number of online gambling sites including Aim-listed Betonsports, which ran into legal problems in the US.

He began his career at Hermes Investment Management, which manages the pension fund for BT.

The two are starting the company at a testing time for the fund management industry, as returns become harder to come by and the recession destroys wealth. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index is down 13pc so far this year after tumbling a record 31pc in 2008.

New Star itself has proved one of the biggest victims of the collapse in financial markets. Saddled with repaying large debts and facing a decline in stock markets, New Star was taken over by rival Henderson Group in January for £115m.